There's plenty of advice out there for UK-based TESCO' s new CEO Dave Lewis as pledges to return to the core of Tesco's business, "in price, availability and service."

For me, there's a critical question: what one change will deliver an 80% difference in results?

I think I know. I spent 6 months visiting TESCO at least twice a week when I was in Hertford, and all I can say is "wow." If you just view TESCO with the eyes of a typical US customer, it's obvious what that 80% difference is.

Inclusivity: Will America Find Its Soul Again is a book of questions, hints, and suggestions about creating more opportunity for more people--starting with the USA, but looking at and learning from the rest of the world.

The very idea of the "United" States is based on the principles of inclusivity--all men and women are created equal under the law. But we seem to have lost our conviction that inclusivity is possible or even to be desired. The current divisive political climate, along with economic uncertainty, has fostered an atmosphere of fear and narrow-mindedness across the country.

What can we do in the face of this reality? The choice is not easy, but it is clear. Either we will decide to be more inclusive, or we will turn against each other - finding reasons to divide ourselves, not just from each other as citizens, but also from a shared future.

The USA, unless we decide otherwise, will become simply the SA.

This book is dedicated to an inclusive future for all our children, including my daughters M and K, and the idea that the United States is still the last best hope fordemocracy and inclusivity. We won't have one without the other.

I go to my local bookstore, drink a coffee and
browse the shelves. When I get home, I rush to the computer and buy the books I
fancied - online! If it's a business
book, I download a copy on my digital reader, and if it's a literary
work, I buy the physical book at a discounted price.

As a way to assuage my guilt, I've thought of
some ways to help my local bookstore survive - because, like so many of us, I
love the physical bookstore experience - nothing beats the Zen practice of
disinterested info-grazing - and I'd like to continue to enjoy it.

However, I notice at my local Barnes & Noble that
they're busy selling Nook ereaders in every cranny. [Do they really think they
can compete with the iPad or even Kindle?] Is this really going to save the
physical store?Nope.

Most likely, it's an idea dreamt up by the
financial types at headquarters who've been "missioned" to tap into the digital
value-stream. After all, why should B&N just stand there and watch their
profits drift lazily down a South American river? It's important to note that
despite B&N saying the Nook is a "success," they still rely on brick and
mortar stores (retail and college bookstores) for over 75%
of their revenue and the competition is going to become even more intense with
dozens of new tablet and reader devices being introduced this year.

And how does B&N take a trip down the Nile? Apparently,
the secret sauce is that they allow Nook owners to take their devices into any
B&N physical store and read any e-book for free. Nooktalk
tells usthat in reality, it's not
exactly a seamless reading experience.And now that Amazon allows Kindle owners to "lend"
books to each other, the Nook may find itself in the, ahem, corner.

So what can your local bookstore do to take advantage of its strengths?

Here are three suggestions to shake up the physical bookstore business model:

Daily Book Rental
Why can't the bookstore become a pay-as-you-read library? As a kid growing up
in India, I remember borrowing books (alright, some these were Asterix and Tintin comics) from the bookstore for a daily fee.This business model shows some reverse
innovation promise. Can you imagine "tiered pricing" linked to free coffee
rewards?Sign up for the all-you-can-read buffet. And of course,
we get to pay fines if we return our books late.

Publish and
Distribute Local Books
What if a physical copy of your book
gets published
in-store and sold in your town's bookstore?Can you visualize a "Newbie Authors" section where one copy of your book
gets to sit on the shelf for a week?If
it doesn't sell in a week, you can either pay for shelf space or you can buy
your books back.The minute you or your
mother buys your Great American Novel, a new one is printed and placed on the
shelf. The top 5 bestsellers in each town get national distribution and
placement for a week.Book fest!

Nurture Communities
of InterestSome bookstores think they are already doing
this by sponsoring author readings and cheese tasting events.But what we need is more focused on the
actual needs and interests of the customer - practical and impractical.Here are some examples of the types of
participatory communities that could be grown and nurtured in your local
bookstore:

Healthy Living

Relationships

Entrepreneurship

Food + Wine

Storytelling/Writing

Music

Art History

Travel

How does a bookstore do this?If you're Barnes and Noble, you could hire
retired teachers to do this; pick people who are enthusiastic and spread their
love of the subject.If you're a small
bookstore, you can still find enthusiastic community leaders to do the same -
in fact you can specialize, and create a niche around the main clientele in
your store.

Does all of this sound a bit off the wall?Good, then it's worth a try.The Nook, I'm sorry to say, isn't going to
save Barnes & Noble.

1) How can organizations best address important societal problems such as poverty, inadequate health care, sub-par education, and an unhealthy planet?

2) What's the best advice for students who want to address these issues and still live lives of relative comfort?

The reason I'm helping the professor is because now, more than ever, we need the brightest students to tackle the world's biggest problems. And the oil-coal-nuclear lobby isn't making things any easier...

I first met Bob Freling at a board meeting of the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) in San Francisco several years ago. At the time, I felt that here was an NGO doing innovative things but not getting enough visibility for their work. They were solar way before solar was cool.

What struck me is how informal and close the board members were. One of the board members - Larry Hagman (good ol’ J.R. Ewing) - did a brilliant set of solar commercials which I think says a lot about his character and wanting to make the world a better place (quite the opposite of his TV character!). But I digress.

The story here is that SELF pioneered the use of solar power to fight “energy poverty” across a spectrum of applications with their “solar integrated development model” - from clean water, to drip irrigation to improve food security, to electricity for health clinics, schools, and micro-enterprise.

“It’s simple really. First, solar
energy powers pumps and filters for clean water. This also enables drip
irrigation for critical crops. Once people have those necessities, the solar
energy is used to power health care facilities which can power equipment and
refrigerate vaccines, for example. This increasingly healthy population can
then open schools which are powered by solar to provide computer and
Internet-based learning. Finally, these well-fed, well-cared for, well-educated
villagers can begin community and entrepreneurial activities to grow their
economy.”

Bob’s optimism is tempered with reality. The Millennium Development Goals won’t be achieved without energy access, he explains in another blog post. In case you forgot what the MDGs are (as I often do) they’re listed as:

Note that they are interrelated, ecosystemic problems - and that from Bob’s perspective, energy is the key factor which makes all of them feasible.

With the $300 House project, my eyes have been opened to the fact that the approaches for dealing with the poor are often not very constructive, and sometimes end up doing more damage than good. That’s what $300 House adviser Stuart L. Hart is talking about when he says we need to create smaller problems. It is also a concern of our critics on the $300 House. When I spoke to Matias Echanove recently, he was concerned that mass produced housing could in fact disrupt the local economy - the small businesses that are based in informal slums around the country. I hear him.

Our $300 House project is exploring ways to integrate services and jobs into the ecosystem as well, and we’re reaching out to talk to the leaders in the communities that are interested in this approach. In India, we’ve just completed a survey - with the help of THL - that covers 15 villages in three of the poorest states in India - Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Jharkhand. I’ll go into more detail in a later post.

For me the question is quite simple - we see an explosion of interest in developing integrated townships for the middle class in India, but why is there nothing comparable for the poor? To borrow a phrase from the US, why can’t we build “master-planned communities” for the poor?

Is it too much to ask that governments, NGOs and development institutions, and businesses work together with the communities involved to build integrated solutions?

Unfortunately, there are far too few examples of collaborative development. This is something we all need to look at urgently. There is also a problem of ownership. The development community, NGOs, and most governments think they “own” the problem. Unfortunately, without a business mindset to make solutions scale, their is so little real progress.

The poor remain poor.

And that’s why the work Paul Polak is doing is so important. He’s looking at making small changes at the bottom of the pyramid; small changes that make a big difference in the earnings of the poor. This is also the approach advocated by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Bannerjee in Poor Economics.

At a much larger scale, we see an example in the Gates Foundation’s approach - which is all about examining the ecosystems of poverty. A common criticism of the Gates Foundation goes along these lines: “How can people like Gates, living in a different universe, help people at the bottom of the pyramid?” This is a false and damaging argument, but answered quite well by Sam Dryden:

“Some people may ask how my team and I—working at the world’s largest
foundation located in a prosperous corner of a rich nation—can relate to
a subsistence farming family in Ethiopia or Bangladesh. This is a very
reasonable question to ask. The farmer has a direct connection to the
land and we are considerably removed, both by distance and culture. We
begin by realizing these differences and humbly listening to farmers and
their families, learning and respecting their cultures, ways of living,
and knowledge of place and home. The solutions we seek are those
appropriate and welcomed in this context, not those imposed by distant
values or interests.”

And finally, perhaps there is an alternative to the giant top-down programs, and incremental bottom-up “Let the Poor Do It Themselves” approaches we’ve encountered.

With the $300 House, we’re thinking micro-development - is it possible to build integrated micro-solutions at the village level? And in cities, at the neighborhood level?

When I first started working on classifying online ecosystems, I had no idea that my thinking there would influence my thoughts on the $300 House. But now it seems like the systems approach to understanding wicked problems is pretty much the only way to go. None of this is new, of course, but I'm still impressed at the power of ecosystem thinking.

Here's how Nobel prize laureate Gunnar Myrdal was thinking about the problems of race and poverty:

The "vicious circle" has not yet made its way into our political thinking though, if we judge the policy makers of today's Congress. Heck, they can't even bring themselves to accept the effects of global warming - in no small part thanks to our lobbyist friends.

The idea of poverty as the outcome of a dysfunctional ecosystem is explained here as well:

Note that this applies to poverty in the US as well, not just the emerging world.

So, part of tackling the issue of affordable housing for the poor is to try to understand the interconnected nature of these problems. I tried to draw causal arrows between the various problems, but gave up. In essence, we have a problem of insecurity, in which all of these factors must be addressed simultaneously if we are to change the vicious cycle of poverty, disease, and suffering. Here's what I ended up with:

The poor live in an insecure, unbalanced universe.

I'm calling it the "ecosystems of poverty."

Next we'll look at the idea of integrated development (another old idea) which fell out of favor, but must be re-evaluated in today's light if we are serious about poverty alleviation.

The story is captured in this snippet borrowed from a larger infographic from the New York Times. The middle class is under historic assault in the US, explains Robert Reich, and this bodes badly for democracy, not just here, but all over the world.

Here’s the money quote:

Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During
periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total
income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation
as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous
cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume
more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby
stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats.

During periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion — as
between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the
present day — growth slowed, median wages stagnated and we suffered
giant downturns. It’s no mere coincidence that over the last century the
top earners’ share of the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and 2007
— the two years just preceding the biggest downturns.

There’s a growing sense in the business community that we must find a way to work together again. To do this, we have to reject political terrorism - the political brinksmanship which prevents us from finding common ground or even beginning to look for honest solutions. Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, recently created a stir when he suggested that it was time to halt all political donations. Warren Buffett did the same with his no-nonsense plea to raise his taxes.

Welcome to the third world, America! Looks like we’re headed on the fast-track back to serfdom. Brought to you in large part by the GOP and corporate Democrats.

For the past two years I have been conducting some extensive testing with a number of my clients in various fields - software, consulting services, academics, non-profits, entertainment, and self improvement - and here's what I came up with at the end of the study. I'm interested in one metric - conversion to sales.

The Business Roundtable, a group comprising 200 of the largest companies in the United States, is out with a “study” that claims to show that the United States levies excessively high tax rates on companies. It actually shows nothing of the kind.

Surprise! They’re only the CEOs of the “most respected” companies in the US.

Have they no shame? No sense of decency?

The CEOs should be embarrassed, but instead they keep playing this absurd, deceptive game. We have come to expect this sort of behavior from the oil and coal lobby, but not you. To Bank of America, General Electric, Xerox, Wal-Mart, UPS, Target, SAP, Pepsico, Microsoft, and Procter and Gamble: Grow up, ladies and gentlemen. You are hurting both democracy and capitalism. Not to mention your brand.

Do designers have a seat in the boardroom -- or just in the basement? How often does your CEO ever talk to a designer?

Are designers empowered to overrule beancounters -- or vice versa?

Is the input of designers considered to be peripheral to "real" business decisions -- or does it play a vital role in shaping them? Is design treated as a function or a competence?

Are designers seen just as mechanics of mere stuff -- or as vital contributors to the art of igniting new industries, markets, and catgeories, sparking more enduring demand, building trust, providing empathy, and seeding tomorrow's big ideas?

How much weight does senior management give to right-brained ideas, like delight, amazement, intuition, and joy? Just a little, a lot -- or, as for most companies, almost none?

Seriously.

We all need to wake up. The Chamber of Commerce approach to design isn't going to work anymore.

9/11 shows us just how divided our country still is. On the wrong side you have the threat of Koran burning from a lunatic preacher. On the right side you have President Obama making a plea for tolerance and true freedom.

Across Russia, the political drama adds to the horror as this, the hottest summer on record, takes its toll on the poorest Russians as they lose property, homes, and even lives:

For those of you who are ready to say this is "God's punishment," I can tell you we're probably going to be next. Maybe not this summer, because we're getting far more rain in the West than usual, but perhaps the next. The reason I can say this with near certainty is that our forests are already dead or dying. So my guess is that all these dead trees are going to burn across North America pretty soon. The map looks like this (it's an overlay of the extent of the pine-beetle plague):

Our politicians do nothing. Our Republican Senators have been owned by Big-Oil and Big-Coal forever. And the poor Christians haven't yet figured out that they're being taken for a ride. For them, I say - check your Revelations 11:18 - at some point you have to say "enough!" Why do you support these people who are destroying God's Creation?

Sen. Jim Inhofe, this is on your head. Your grandchildren won't forgive you, even if they think you're just swell right now. This is not "global warming deception" as you call it in your Luntzian language of deceit. It's g-l-o-b-a-l w-a-r-m-i-n-g, period.

Ever since the Haiti earthquake, I’ve been thinking about why we don’t have a quick-build house made of sustainable materials at a price point that the poor can afford (with micro-credit if needed).

The $300 House-for-the-Poor is an extension of the concept of “reverse innovation” (inspired by my client and friend VG) in which innovations developed in poor countries are then brought back for use in developed countries and other parts of the world. Housing impacts health, energy, education, and security.

What if we could build sustainably designed houses for the world’s poor at an affordable cost? What if these same designs could provide relief to refugees and victims of natural disasters? The we I’m referring to is a collaborative of companies, governments, and NGOs.

This type of a structure will be engineered in the same way the TATA Nano was engineered - without the traditional assumptions.

Once built, the $300 house should be used across the globe - from Haiti, to Africa, India, and yes, even in this country, to help the homeless.

So what are we waiting for? It’s time to get busy designing the $300 House!

Anytime we see people dividing people based on otherness,
it's time to worry.

Joel Stein's My Own Private India is not the kind of journalism you expect from TIME magazine. But it does show you how immigration in the US has become an irrational issue - charged with racism and tones of hatred.

Never mind that Stein and TIME have apologized. How could either one have assumed that this could pass as journalism, or commentary, or even satire?

Just a few days ago I praisedForrester’s decision to create individual blogs for all their analysts. So they finally get it, I thought. Boy, was I wrong!

Yesterday I noticed how their migration to the new blogging platform was executed:

Yes, that’s the dreaded “The requested page could not be found” message.

Apparently, for Forrester, moving to a new platform means all old URLs die.

This is just so wrong. Linkrot is a common mistake that companies and institutions make all too often. For this to happen at an institution like Forrester shows me they don’t understand web basics. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of big companies have made this mistake, but for Forrester it’s inexcusable!

Any URL that has ever been exposed to the Internet should live forever: never let any URL die since doing so means that other sites that link to you will experience linkrot. If these sites are conscientious, they will eventually update the link, but not all sites do so. Thus, many potential new users will be met by an error message the first time they visit your site instead of getting the valuable content they were expecting. Remember, people follow links because they want something on your site: the best possible introduction and more valuable than any advertising for attracting new customers.

and

At other times, it becomes necessary to re-architect a site and impose a new structure. Even then, the rule continues to be: you are not allowed to break any old links. The solution is to set up a set of redirects: a scheme whereby the server tells the browser that the requested page is to be found at a new URL. All decent browsers will automatically take the user to the new URL, and really good browsers will even update their bookmark database to use the new URL in the future if the user had bookmarked the old URL.

I remember when the same stupid mistake was made by Harvard Business Review back when they switched domains from hbswk.hbs.edu to harvardbusiness.org. Overnight, they destroyed their online ecosystem, as Forrester has just done.

What’s the big deal, you ask? In today’s connected world, this is brand destruction plain and simple. Not the way to build an attention platform.

Quote of the Week:I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already﻿ to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. - Thomas Jefferson

"...angry employees are more likely to commit further resources to a failing project or choice. By contrast, fear makes people second-guess themselves and often abandon support for efforts that have gone even slightly off the tracks."

OK. What happens when you have other emotions like sadness, joy, or just plain happiness? Do you make stupid decisions when you delude yourself? Or does a cynic make better decisions?

Junk food elicits addictive behavior in rats similar to the behaviors of rats addicted to heroin, a new study finds. Pleasure centers in the brains of rats addicted to high-fat, high-calorie diets became less responsive as the binging wore on, making the rats consume more and more food. The results, presented October 20 at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting, may help explain the changes in the brain that lead people to overeat.

So is this another example of addiction as a business strategy - similar to what the tobacco companies were doing earlier?

Maybe that's why the IT geeks have such a hard time implementing Lean IT>>

Today, under the administration of President Barack Obama, the House has passed bills preventing climate destruction and reforming our broken health care system, while the Senate searches for 60 votes in the face of Republican obstruction. Every day the Senate delays, more people die from lack of health care.

The filibuster should apply to the initiatives of both parties or to neither. Why should launching wars, and cutting taxes for the rich, require only 51 votes while saving lives requires 60?

If you haven’t heard about free2work.org, you will. This is part of a growing explosion of consumer-education organizations dedicated to exposing “worst practices” among multinationals.

The hope is that if consumers know what is going on, they will vote with their purchasing power and seek out the companies that are doing good. I’m all for it. Who wouldn’t be? Oh, I forgot about the US Chamber of Commerce…

On the academic side of things, we see the same story emerging:

Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s latest book, SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good argues that “the model of American capitalism that worked so well to raise the fortunes of millions of people last century appears to have hit a wall. What’s good for General Motors may no longer be good for the country. In its place must arise a new model of the company, one that serves society as well as rewarding shareholders and employees.”